The Way Things Are
by vader-incarnate
Summary: There's a certain amount of guilt that comes from killing your only son. Even if he kills you back. [Dark Luke RotJ AU, LukeVader Angst, Completed 6-1]
1. Part 1

**TITLE**: "The Way Things Are"

**AUTHOR**: vaderincarnate

**DISCLAIMER**: I own absolutely nothing. Luke Skywalker and Lord Vader are fictional characters and the property of George Lucas. They will be returned more or less unharmed when I've finished with them though, as always, I make no guarantee about sanity remaining intact.

**CONTENT**: RotJ AU, L/V angst.

**AUTHOR'S NOTE(S)**: Gift-fic for **Ghostwriter155**, for knowing the origins of a quote I posted on my livejournal. It's not very long, hon, but I wrote this sort of quickly when the plot bunny just sorta unexpectedly _bit_... and it's apparently impossible for me to think 'angst!' without also thinking 'ooh, chance for Dark!Luke'. o.O

The stipulations were:

1. Title: The Way Things Are  
2. Subject: Must mention Darth Vader, but does not have to be about him.  
3. Line To Use:"Believe me, I was prepared for everything - except you."

* * *

You've changed so much, Luke.

You've changed so much in these mere hours: changes I can't describe, changes I can't see, but changes that I know are there nonetheless. It's nothing palpable, nothing that anyone would notice at all if they aren't looking closely, but I know. I know.

Your eyes are harder. Harder and colder in some infinitesimal way that can never be measured, some little thing I will never be able to describe. That touch of compassion, the hint of your mother I saw when you tried to appeal to that man who had once been your father ... it's gone, gone forever, extinguished by the unremitting darkness that will henceforth dictate your life.

And maybe that's what disturbs me most of all, seeing that reflection of my own eyes in your young face.

Your stance is prouder, straighter. Arrogant: I see it in your step, the tilt of your head, in every sinuous movement you make as you stride down the narrow hall to take a hold of your destiny once and for all. And I know what you feel, because I've been there before -- the darkness that courses through your young body, giving you a dark clarity you've never before experienced, power beyond anything you've ever dreamed of.

You're not a boy anymore. You're not even the young man who proudly gave himself into Imperial hands this morning, the young man who risked his life and his soul for his friends, the young man who believed in his father's innate goodness and hoped for his father's redemption.

I don't _know_ you, scarcely recognize this stranger that stands in front of me -- my apprentice, my subordinate ... but surely not my son. Surely not Padmé's son.

And yet this is the path I've chosen.

This is the path I've chosen for us, my son, the destiny I promised you on Bespin as you clung precariously to the cloud city. This is the path you denied there, the darkness you denied there, the _truth_ you denied there ... all of which you accepted in those few momentuous seconds aboard the Death Star.

And some part of me is glad that we've taken this path. Glad that we overthrew the Emperor, that we reached this crossroad despite the old tyrant's schemes and plans and manipulation. I had scarcely dreamed we would get this far, defeat the Emperor be on the verge of crushing the Alliance once and for all. And though I prepared for every eventuality, I knew that the odds were against us, knew that a thousand things could go wrong -- that you could turn back, that _I_ could turn back, that you could die, that I could die ... and yet, it somehow all worked according to plan.

Believe me, I was prepared for everything -- except you.

Because the rest of me is screaming in horror, that this is the path that I chose for _myself_, not the path I chose for _you_ -- the path that _I_ chose to walk, not the path for my son, Padmé's son, this near-stranger who looks at me now with that pair of infinitely cold eyes. You weren't meant to walk this path, weren't made to feel the darkness that now courses through your veins; you were destined to do greater things. Better things.

And of all the things I've done, of all the burdens I've carried, of all the people I've killed, of all the guilt I've earned -- somehow this is the worst one yet. I've destroyed some integral innocence, some irreparable virtue about my son that can never be replaced, something I thought had died in the galaxy altogether and something that will not be seen again until this darkness has been cleared away forever.

Because I've murdered my _son_.

_But this is they way things are_, I tell myself as I turn away from those haunting blue eyes. _This is how things were meant to be._

* * *

**FINIS**


	2. Part 2

Okay, I usually don't do this ... but here's what happens next, at least in my mind. It just kinda begged to be written.

* * *

Perhaps I shouldn't be all that surprised when you run me through with your blade.

Yet, somehow, I am. Somehow, I never expected it to get this far, never expected to be here dying at your hand as you look on with those cold, impassive blue eyes. Some part of me still insists upon thinking of you as my _son_, even after all this -- still a boy, still the compassionate almost-Jedi who risked his life and his soul for his father's redemption.

But you aren't, are you? You're not Luke Skywalker anymore, no longer the boy I had come to admire, maybe to respect, maybe even to love. You're something totally new, forged from the fires of darkness and reborn in a holocaust of death and despair and destruction -- not _my_ son, not now, never again.

Perhaps it's fair, in a way -- as father kills the son, the son kills the father.

And yet you aren't a stranger at all. Because if you were a stranger and I the same Lord Vader I've been pretending to be for so many long years, you'd be dead by now, on the floor gasping for breath or writhing in pain. Even if it cost me my life, I would have taken you down with me, because I am a Sith, dammit, and the fool who tries to kill a Sith buys his own death as well.

But I don't strike, don't move at all. Because the boy who was my son was right, and just as surely as my darkness poisoned his light, his light has poisoned my darkness; just as surely as my darkness changed _you_, you've changed _me_.

And in these dying moments, I find that there is only one thing I need to do.

"I'm sorry," I whisper, even as I fall to the ground.

I don't even know if you can hear me, without the help of these machines I've depended upon for so long. But I have to say it, even if you can't hear it, have to get it out even if you can't accept it. Because you have to _know_, have to know that your father loved you, have to know that I never meant for it to end like this. I wanted what was best for you, my son, and it wasn't _this_.

I'm sorry for so much, Luke, you who were once my son. I'm so sorry I brought you to this, led you to this, damned you to this. Your eyes have lost their brightness because of me, your life lost its meaning, your soul lost its luster ... all because of my own mistakes and blunders that brought everything to ruin.

You were meant for a good life, Luke, a better life than the darkness can ever offer. You were destined for great things, things that will never happen now because of what I wanted, because of the path I chose for the both of us. Before you die, you'll know that -- and you'll hate me for that, even more than you hate me now, because it was _I_ that damned you to this mockery of a life and doomed you to this fate from which you will never escape.

I never meant to damn you to this existence I've suffered through for all these long years, never meant for it to come to this. I wasn't thinking enough, only wanted to defeat the Emperor, to make things better ... but none of that matters, because it's you who will have to pay the price for your father's mistakes and your father's hubris. And you _will_ pay it, my son, a thousand times over.

_Force, I'm sorry._

And as I die, it's the weight of a thousand regrets that pulls me down into the darkness.

* * *

**Finis (For Real This Time)**


	3. Part 3

Because death isn't the end, for him.

* * *

I have long ceased to think of death as something to fear. Longer still since I have stopped to wonder about what happens _after_ death.

The Jedi had never encouraged that kind of thought. _There is no death_, they preached, even as I decimated their ranks and reduced the towering spires of the Temple to rubble. No death, nothing after death: neither reward nor punishment for the decisions in our lives after we'd lived them, no hope and no promise for the thereafter.

The Sith teachings, of course, said even less, focused as they were upon the present life. Power was what mattered, in the here and now, power and fear and destruction: it was a easy creed to live by, a hedonistic approach to the galaxy that gave no thought to what was _right_ or _wrong_ or what we would expect beyond that.

That, I'd always thought, was why the Emperor had always feared death so much: no matter how much power he would attain in this life, he had no way of knowing what lay beyond. Not such fear for one such as me, though, who had died quite thoroughly before being reborn in a tempest hatred and despair and destruction.

And what did _I_ think? I, who had studied both orders and embraced both sides of the Force with an equal and frightening ferocity? I _didn't_ think; I never thought about it. I had died once already at the hand of a master I both hated and loved, was living in a hell of my own creation. But what lay beyond my final death didn't matter, or so I thought; I never actively thought about anything as trite as heaven or hell or my precious immortal soul.

I did not expect, even subconsciously, to enter any sort of heaven. That was the course for heroes and martyrs who died nobly and honorably, not for a monster whose decisions had destroyed countless innocent lives. My life, my son's life: millions of nameless others I had never met but had somehow been damned because of my very existence.

To become one with the Force, embraced in death by an order I destroyed, a master I betrayed, a mother I deserted, a wife I abandoned: I have never been such an idealist that I would expect something so mundane as death to heal scars and wounds that have festered for decades.

So perhaps some subconscious part of me expected to be admitted into hell. But neither did I expect to be greeted by horned demons or eternal flames or the bitter smell of sulfur in the air. I have long recognized that hell is something of my own creation, a prison I build for myself rather than the quaint and curious notions of hell embraced my so many others.

Hell, I'd thought, whenever I'd thought about it, was the memory of my skin being seared from my bones because of the heat, the smell of burning flesh filling my nostrils as my own scream filled the air. Hell was living through that to live an eternity within a metal shell, watching the world pass by from behind a prison of durasteel.

I was wrong. _This_ is hell.

To linger on after death, wraith-like and insubstantial as I watch you wield this power I should never have given you. I was a fool to think that the afterlife would be anything different, would be anything beyond _this_: had I believed that I could escape it all, escape to some otherworldly plane and forget all I'd done?

Hell is watching helplessly as you take the place I had never meant for you to take, watching as you take the helm of the Empire. Watching as you kill yourself a little more every day, poisoning yourself with every touch of the Dark. As the little boy who had once been my son slowly and painfully dies even as you grow stronger and more powerful.

You can see me, sometimes. I know it, watching over you as I always do. You see me during those moments between sleep and wakefulness, as I hover like the ghost I am at the edge of your consciousness. You see me and you hate me, hate me for damning you to this existence just as surely as I damned myself. You were meant for better things -- not this. Never this.

And that's the worst: knowing that you hate me, as richly as I deserve your spite. Knowing as I linger in this place that is neither life nor death and watching in helpless horror as you become what I had once been, a fate you never deserved.

I could have spared you. Should have spared you.

And it _hurts_. Hurts to linger and to wonder, to repent and to regret. To know that I loved you and could have saved you from all this, but chose not to -- and isn't this a fitting hell for me to suffer through, then, the ultimate and appropriate punishment for my crimes and for my sins? An existence without hope, and maybe that's what hell really is: a life without hope, a fate we can't escape, a choice that can't be changed.

But this is the way things are. The way I shaped them, the way I'd planned for all this to happen, the path I chose. This is the way things are, and I can do nothing about it.

* * *

**Finis. For real this time, I swear.**


End file.
